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An occasional blog about populist politics and popular music, not necessarily at the same time. LinksLocal Links Social Media My Other Websites Music Politics Others Networking Music DatabaseArtist Search: Website SearchGoogle: Recent Reading
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Blog Entries [1130 - 1139]Monday, April 20, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 24855 [24826] rated (+29), 408 [398] unrated (+10). Third straight week at 29, so I guess that's the new 30. Wouldn't have hit that but for a lark decision to check out the early Charles Lloyd records on Rhapsody after the new one underwhelmed me. They, at least, were relatively short, but ultimately merged into a solid, indistinguishable mass -- aside from Keith Jarrett's outstanding rhythm work. Very little of Lloyd's post-1970 work is on Rhapsody, so it's hard to say anything definitive about his now obscure 1970s and 1980s records. In 1989 he joined ECM and patiently rebuilt his career, hitting a peak when he started working with another amazing pianist, Jason Moran. Make what you will that the new one marks his move from ECM to Blue Note, and that Moran is out, replaced by a pianist whose name I've already forgotten. On the other hand, Blue Note's pairing of Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas works as expected. I spent a good deal of time this past week sorting through old shelves of jazz CDs. Currently the work area is still quite some mess, but I expect to make some progress this week. I had planned on keeping all of the Jazz CG-era B+(***) and A-list albums in a set of six modular shelf units, but it now looks like the number needed is eight. I have the extra two nearby, but their contents need to be moved elsewhere, and I'm cleaning out that elsewhere. The next space likely to be exhausted is the basement hell where the most unwanted items go to linger. Those I need to start to cull -- although the general high quality of jazz these days has led me to consign more than a few good records by obscure artists or interesting failures by better known musicians there. Could be a neverending struggle. For some reason the incoming mail picked up this week. Not so many A-list records this week, although eight high-B+ records came close. Milo Miles put Ayelet Rose Gottlieb at the top of his 1st Quarter 2015: Jazz list and, if memory recalls, had previously touted Tal National. Michael Tatum is a big fan of the Skrillex/Diplo record. My own favorites among the three-stars are Sergi Sirvent's Unexpected piano trio and Oleg Frish's kitschy standards duets, although Hu Vibrational got the most spins (five, I think). Incoming mail included unsolicited copies of all three albums by Damien Wilkins' New Zealand group, The Close Readers. Christgau reviewed their latest and I concurred in last week's Rhapsody Streamnotes. I was tempted to check out the earlier titles -- they're here (via bandcamp) -- but let my mind wander elsewhere. Now I feel obligated to go back. As a down payment, we'll include the album cover and note the known grade in unpacking. I need to get cracking on my Downbeat Critics Poll ballot. Expect a report later this week. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old records rated this week:
Grade changes:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, April 20, 2015 Weekend RoundupLate start but I had the Civil War links, and added a couple more. Plus, for local color, let's start with Crowson's cartoon today:
By the way, babyfaced State Senator O'Donnell (R) happens to represent my district. You can read more about his bill in, well, The Guardian, or The Chicago Tribune. Jordan Weissmann looks at what welfare recipients actually spend money on here. One thing I haven't seen much discussion of is how this law is to be enforced. Will the state be assigning accountants to go over welfare recipients' books? Or will we expect movie ticket takers to rat out customers they suspect of being on welfare?
Ask a question, or send a comment. Tuesday, April 14, 2015 Rhapsody Streamnotes (April 2015)Four days shy of a month this time. About the same length as last time, but took a few more days to compile. A few of the records under "New Releases" are more than five years old: things I received as promos and sat on until some recent housecleaning. Needless to say, nothing there I really missed out on. The "old music" remains opportunistic: e.g., the guy in the Paranoid Style used to be in the Mendoza Line, so I thought I'd sample one of their better regarded albums; Chris Farlowe was the only one of Van Morrison's duetists who impressed me, so I thought I'd check out something more; I recalled Tim Berne's pre-Snake Oil groups more fondly (especially Marc Ducret and Tom Rainey), so scrounged up a previously unheard Big Satan -- unfortunately, no better than the new one; Milford Graves, Woody Herman, and Eddie Higgins (and maybe some more) just popped up on browse lists. Percy Sledge died today. He only had one real hit, but he fills out a single-disc best-of remarkably well. Robert Christgau recommended Rhino's 1998 The Very Best of Percy Sledge. I'm satisfied with Atlantic's 1998 compilation, The Ultimate Collection (graded A long ago). Another notable who just died is Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano (NYT obit). You may recall that Hugo Chávez, when he met Barack Obama in 2009, gave the president a copy of Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America. For a small taste of Galeano, see these ten quotes. For instance, this one captures the basic ethic behind this column: "One writes out of a need to communicate and to commune with others, to denounce that which gives pain and to share that which gives happiness." These are short notes/reviews based on streaming records from Rhapsody. They are snap judgments based on one or two plays, accumulated since my last post along these lines, back on March 18. Past reviews and more information are available here (6272 records). Recent Releases
Action Bronson: Mr. Wonderful (2014 [2015], Atlantic/Vice): Former chef Arian Arslani gets his major labor debut after several strong mixtapes, runs through his pieces at a fever pitch. Can't say as I caught much, or approve of what I did catch, but he makes enough of a joke of it the ride doesn't quite make you queasy. B+(***) Albare: Only Human (2014 [2015], Alfi): Guitarist, born in Morocco, grew up in Israel and France, wound up in Melbourne down under. Album cover offers 24 snapshots of people all over the world, and the groove, even the rap that ends the title cut, aims to be universally embraced. B+(**) [cd] Gabriel Amargant Quintet: And Now for Something Completely Different (2014 [2015], Fresh Sound New Talent): Tenor saxophonist, second album, recorded in Girona, in the far northeast corner of Spain, backed with piano, guitar, bass, and drums, with all pieces by the leader. I can't say the title is completely true, but I'm hard pressed to remember the last time a tenor saxophonist took the stage with such fluid mastery -- Tommy Smith, maybe. A- Oren Ambarchi: Quixotism (2014, Editions Mego): Prolific avant-garde experimentalist -- AMG lists 5 albums for 2014, only 3 in 2013 but 9 in 2012 and I wouldn't be surprised if they've missed some collaborations -- initially playing drums but has moved on to guitar and synths. One of the more attractive ambient albums I've heard recently, just interesting drumming with clouds of synth. Docked a bit for long quiet patches (although it's often hard to get the volume right on the computer). B+(**) Christian Artmann: Fields of Pannonia (2014 [2015], self-released): Flute player, leads a quarter with piano-bass-drums. Not my favorite horn, but the alto flute adds some depth, and the stealthy impressionism is pleasantly attractive. B+(*) [cd] Joey Bada$$: B4.DA.$$ (2015, Cinematic Music Group): Jo-Vaughn Virginie Scott, I suppose that's a name a rapper would have to change, but the dollar signs just push "Bad-Ass" to an even higher level of crassness. Actually, his first studio album is far from crass, with its sharper-than-underground sound, a couple nods to his Caribbean ancestors, even a dance anthem ("Teach Me," one of two bonus tracks). B+(***) Courtney Barnett: Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (2015, Mom + Pop Music): Australian singer-songwriter, got some attention last year when she combined two EPs into a debut calling card, but initially struck me as a folkie troubadour, a wordy one at that. This has a wordy title too, but the first thing you notice is the guitar. A- Antoine Berjeaut: Wasteland (2013 [2014], Fresh Sound New Talent): The French trumpet player's music is appropriately dreary with occasional sparks, including tenor sax on four cuts. What gives it all narrative force is Mike Ladd's spoken words, but a bit on the melodramatic side. B+(*) Tim Berne's Snakeoil: You've Been Watching Me (2014 [2015], ECM): Alto saxophonist, third group album all for ECM, with Oscar Noriega on clarinet/bass clarinet, Matt Mitchell on piano, Ches Smith on drums, and newcomer Ryan Ferreira on guitar. The two horns remind me of Berne's apprenticeship with Julius Hemphill, but like some of Hemphill's work, this can get stiff and awkward, not that the group isn't capable of powering through any obstacles they run into. B+(***) [dl] Andrew Bishop: De Profundis (2015, Envoi): Saxophonist, teaches at University of Michigan, third album, a trio with Tim Flood on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums. His credits as listed here: flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano and tenor sax -- although I hear more of the latter. All original pieces, six "reimagined" from "De Profundis" by Josquin Des Prez (c. 1440-1521) -- transposed into free jazz. B+(***) [cd] Bossa Brasil and Maurício de Souza Group: Here. There . . . (2010, Pulsa Music): Organized half under each group, the credits are more ambiguous with drummer de Souza and bassist Morrie Louden on all tracks, the others on scattered tracks on both sides -- only difference I see is that Bossa Brasil jazz up Brazilian tunes whereas the latter takes jazz pieces (Joe Henderson, Cedar Walton, Chick Corea, "I Can't Get Started") and gives them a Brazilian twist. B+(*) [cd] Jakob Bro Trio: Gefion (2013 [2015], ECM): Guitarist from Denmark, has a number of previous albums on a small label so this is something of a coming out. Trio, with Thomas Morgan on bass and Jon Christensen on drums. B+(**) [dl] Dewa Budjana: Hasta Karma (2014 [2015], Moonjune): Guitarist from Surabaya in Indonesia, mostly worked in a pop/rock band called Gigi while developing a more jazz-oriented solo career. This comes off as fusion with some eastern spiritual airs, although the band is certifiably postbop -- Joe Locke on vibes, Ben Williams on bass, Antonio Sanchez on drums. B+(*) [cd] Will Butler: Policy (2015, Merge): Arcade Fire bassist, apparently a secondary figure behind brother Win Butler, tosses out his own album, distinguished by upbeat rockers that put most alt/indie outfits to shame. B+(**) Chastity Belt: Time to Go Home (2015, Hardly Art): Punk girl band from Walla Walla, Washington; second album, conscious but rather contained, as if pressurizing for an explosion that never comes. B+(*) The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra: The Symphonic Celtic Album (2011, Silva Screen): The songs are not just Celtic, or even vaguely Celtic: nearly all come from soundtracks -- Miller's Crossing, Lord of the Rings, Barry Lyndon, Braveheart, Titanic, Rob Roy, Highlander, Gladiator, Riverdance (oddly, best thing here), and a half-dozen more of that ilk. The Czechs try to take this shit seriously. C- [cd] Clem Snide: Girls Come First (2015, Zaphwee): Eef Barzelay's alt/indie band, originally from Boston but now transplanted to Nashville where they feature both lap and pedal steel guitars. But for all the band members listed, this feels small and intimate, the work of a lonely, claustrophobic voice -- at least until "Like Lightning Flashes," loose with glimmering steel. B+(**) The Close Readers: The Lines Are Open (2014, Austin): A New Zealand novelist, Damien Wilkins, doesn't worry about coming up with a distinctive sound when leaning on the Go-Betweens and the Chills works so well. A- Tom Collier: Alone in the Studio (2014 [2015], Origin): born 1950 in Washington, moved to Los Angeles in 1974, back to teach at University of Washington in 1980. Cut a record in 1991 and several more since 2004. Credits here: vibraphone, marimba, piano, drums, bass synthesizer. Four originals, three at the end. Listenable, but hard to see the point. B Bruce Cox Core-Tet: Status Cymbals (2012, self-released): Minimal jacket, explains why this literally fell into a crack. Drummer, second album after debut in 1997, about 40 side credits going back to 1992 (Fred Wesley). Mostly Cox originals, four covers (Monk, Shorter, Benny Goldson?), sax quartet: Abraham Burton carries the day. B+(*) [cd] Stephan Crump/Mary Halvorson: Secret Keeper (2013 [2015], Intakt): Bass-guitar duo, second album together. Crump has a real knack for using guitar to extend his range, but Halvorson may not be the right guitarist to do this with -- not so much that she runs away with the bait as that she doesn't. B+(**) [cdr] Isaac Darche: Team & Variations (2014 [2015], Challenge): Guitarist, based in Brooklyn, originally from California. Second album, quintet with Chad Lefkowitz-Brown on tenor sax, Glenn Zaleski on piano, Desmond White on drums, and EJ Strickland on drums. Smart postbop, moves along nicely B+(**) [cd] Ernest Dawkins: Live the Spirit Residency Big Band: Memory in the Center: An Afro Opera: Homage to Nelson Mandela (2014 [2015], Dawk): Chicago saxophonist contents himself to be composer, conductor, arranger and producer here, having lined up four other saxophonists to carry the load, plus three trumpets, two trombones, piano-bass-drums, poet Khari B, and singer Dee Alexander. I might normally complain about the vocals (which can get operatic), but the political rant is inspired, and the muscular exuberance of the band sweeps you away. And when they work in a little township jive, so much the better. A- [cd] Andrew DiRuzza Quintet: Shapes and Analogies (2015, self-released): Guitarist, first album, quintet with Robert Espe on tenor sax, Michael Jarvey on keyboards, plus bass and drums. B+(**) [cd] Fabiano do Nascimento: Dança Dos Tempos (2015, Now-Again): Debut from Brazilian guitarist, based in Los Angeles, backed by Airto Moreira on percussion and Ricardo Pasillas on drums, with occasional vocals from Nascimento and Kana Shimanuki. This never settles into pleasantries, even at its most intimate. A- Lila Downs: Balas y Chocolate (2015, RCA): Born in Oaxaca, Mexico; father American, mother Mixteca; grew up in California, chased the Grateful Dead, hooked up with a jazz pianist, wound up back in Mexico. Heavy norteño vibe, sometimes seems like she's pulling off something new, but the ballads come off as corny. B+(*) Drake: If You're Reading This It's Too Late (2015, Cash Money/Motown): Rapper from Canada, not too long ago the next big thing but after a couple dud albums this one dropped with nary a splash -- one excuse I see is that this was planned as a mixtape but with all the griping about money they (label? artist?) decided at the last minute to cash in. Typical lyric: "I'm turning into a nigger that thinks about money and women 24/7." Actually, that's about all he has to say about women. Or thinking. B DRKWAV: The Purge (2015, Royal Potato Family): A jazz organ trio transposed into a realm of high-power electronica, fast and furious: Skerik on sax, John Medeski on keyboards, and Adam Deitch on drums. B+(***) Eliane Elias: Made in Brazil (2015, Concord): Jazz pianist from Brazil, has more than two dozen albums since 1986, most with little to do with Brazilian music. Her early Plays Jobim was disappointing, but she started singing on 1998's Sings Jobim and I doubt that anyone has done it better. This she actually recorded in Brazil with a local band (plus her husband, bassist Marc Johnson) and more singers than she needs. B+(*) Charles Evans: On Beauty (2014 [2015], More Is More): Baritone saxophonist, made something of a splash when his debut was a solo album titled The King of All Instruments. This treatise on beauty is distinguished by its ugliness, even if that isn't the impression he wants to leave. Dave Liebman, playing soprano sax, is the main malefactor. With Ron Stabinsky on piano and Tony Marino on bass. B [cd] John Fedchock Quartet: Live: Fluidity (2013 [2015], Summit): Trombonist, best known for his New York Big Band recordings, backed by piano-bass-drums here, makes a good case for trombone as a lead instrument. B+(***) [cd] Joe Fiedler Trio: I'm In (2015, Multiphonics Music): Third good trombone record this week (after Steve Turre and John Fedchock), and easily the best. Rob Jost's bass rises above rhythm and harmony for contrasting solos, Michael Sarin hits the right spots on drums, and Fiedler runs rings around the competition. A- [cd] Tomas Fujiwara & the Hook Up: After All Is Said (2014 [2015], 482 Music): Drummer, has two previous albums with this group -- Brian Settles (tenor sax), Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet), Mary Halvorson (guitar), various bassists (Michael Formanek here) -- duos with Taylor Ho Bynum, a group called Thumbscrew (with Halvorson and Formanek), side credits with Anthony Braxton. The horns skew various ways, but focus on the prickly interplay between guitar and drums, a sketchy rhythm always in turmoil. A- The Go! Team: The Scene Between (2015, Memphis Industries): British pop-rock group: they sounded very young on their refreshingly bright 2004 debut; less so on this their fourth album, but they keep it bright with lots of electricity and a group fervor which unfortunately makes it harder to follow. B Colleen Green: I Want to Grow Up (2015, Hardly Art): Singer-songwriter coos over drum machines, or at least that was her original sound -- something to emulate for the live drummers she can now afford, but that compromises her lo-fi sympathy. If only the songs rose to the challenge. But she's trying. B Marty Grosz Meets the Fat Babies: Diga Diga Doo (2013-14 [2015], Delmark): The Fat Babies are a Chicago trad jazz outfit with a couple fine albums if you can't get enough of that old timey sound. Grosz, the son of the famous Weimar caricaturist, fled the Nazis in the early 1930s and grew up on the first trad jazz revival, learning guitar and banjo. He keeps the group loose, and I won't complain that he talks too much toward the end, or that he sings a couple. One of the two sessions adds Jim Dapogny, another legend, on piano. A- [cd] Susie Hansen: Representante de la Salsa (2010, Jazz Caliente): Violinist-singer, third album, with George Balmaseda and Kaspar Abbo also taking lead vocals. Salsas, some mambo and cha cha, runs hot, aimed at the feet. B Heems: Eat Pray Thug (2015, Megaforce): Himanshu Suri, born and raised in Flushing, Queens, New York -- all-American, as shocked as any of us by 9/11, yet when the kneejerk reaction set in he's out buying American flags not because his knee is jerking but as camouflage, for his name and less-assimilated Punjabi family. That story appears often enough here to amount to a theme, at one point breaking out in a chant of "USA" that I could do without. "Suicide by cop" is another line repeated too often. At points the rawness becomes unpleasant. On the other hand, it's all remarkably different and humane. A- [cd] Ray Wylie Hubbard: The Ruffian's Misfortune (2015, Bordello): Long past his Cowboy Twinkies days, also retirement age, his songwriting has sharpened -- in one song he concludes he'd be "better off with the blues" than with a certain woman -- and the music has gotten tougher and harder. Cuts out the flab too, doing ten songs in 33:40. A- Vijay Iyer Trio: Break Stuff (2014 [2015], ECM): Piano trio, with Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums -- third album with this trio, after Historicity (2009) and Accelerando (2012), both A- in my book although my reaction to piano trios is so gut-level I can't begin to tell you why. What I can say is that while typically masterful this doesn't break much -- not even the covers of Monk, Strayhorn, and Coltrane. B+(***) [dl] Tobias Jesso, Jr.: Goon (2015, True Panther Sounds): Young Canadian singer-songwriter, plays piano, reminded me of Billy Joel at first then I realized John Lennon c. Imagine was a closer match, not that Jesso is in that league. Still refreshing to hear. B+(**) Steve Johns: Family (2014 [2015], Strikezone): Drummer, considers his "recording debut as a leader" but shares a 2002 album with his name ahead of saxophonist Peter Brainin, and has several dozen side-credits at least back to 1987 -- Thomas Chapin and Mario Pavone are names that jump out at me. His family here includes saxophonist-wife Debbie Keefe Johns and bassist-son Daryl Johns, and they're joined by guest guitarists Bob DeVos and Dave Stryker. B+(**) [cd] The Kandinsky Effect: Somnambulist (2014 [2015], Cuneiform): Sax-bass-drums trio from France, third album, closer to post-rock with its thick slab sound than to avant -- both saxophonist Warren Walker and bassist Gaël Petrina are also credited with "effects." A- [dl] Kaze: Uminari (2014 [2015], Circum-Libra): Two trumpets (Christian Pruvost and Natsuki Tamura), piano (Satoko Fujii), and drums (Peter Orins) -- third album under this group name, one of many groups Tamura and Fujii have conjured up. Shock out of the gate, turning into exceptionally invigorating avant-jazz, but later one runs into stretches where not much seems to be happening, though if you dig deeper (or just stay patient) it will. B+(***) [cd] Robert Kennedy Trio: Big Shoes (2014 [2015], self-released): Organ trio, debut release, Kennedy on the Hammond, Mason Razavi on guitar, Cody Rhodes on drums. B+(*) [cd] Oded Lev-Ari: Threading (2014 [2015], Anzic): Pianist, from Israel, graduated from New England Conservatory, studying under Bob Brookmeyer. Shows several looks here, including two vocal songs (Alan Hampton, Jo Lawry), often indulging in lush strings, or making space for Anat Cohen's luscious clarinet. B+(**) [cd] Earl MacDonald: Re: Visions (2008 [2010], Death Defying): Pianist, composed most of this and arranged the rest (subtitle: "Works for Jazz Orchestra"), using a standard big band (5 reeds, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, guitar-piano-bass-drums), about half familiar names. B+(**) [cd] Ethan Mann With Chip Crawford & Greg Bandy: It's All About a Groove (2009 [2010], Petunia): Credits read guitar, keyboards, drums, but mostly sounds like organ, just perhaps a bit lighter. B- [cd] Laura Marling: Short Movie (2015, Ribbon Music): Brit singer-songwriter, fifth album, has a folkie rep for framing her songs with guitar, but so did Dylan, or Ani DiFranco. I'm reluctant to put her at that level, but every album has something substantial and this has more than a few things. A- Chris Massey's "Nue Jazz Project": Vibrainium (2010, Chris Massey Music): Drummer, first album, leads a quintet with trumpet (Donald Malloy), alto/soprano sax (Benjamin Drazen), piano (Evgeny Lebedev), and bass (David Ostrem). Don't confuse with Nu Jazz: a Nue is a Japanese folklore creature with the head of a monkey, the body of a raccoon dog, the legs of a tiger, and a snake as a tail. Three pieces by the leader, three more by band members, covers from Joe Henderson and Chick Corea. Basically, high energy hard bop. B+(*) [cd] The Mavericks: Mono (2015, Valory): Raul Malo's group flirted with country when they moved to Nashville two decades ago, but never really fit the mold, or broke it in any interesting ways. All but one Malo originals (five co-credits), throwbacks (or sly allusions) to early-'60s rock 'n' pop, some with Latin beats and/or sax, just nothing you'd think of as classic. The cover? Doug Sahm's "Nitty Gritty," but "(Waiting For) The World to End" would have fooled me. B+(**) Makaya McCraven: In the Moment (2014 [2015], International Anthem): Chicago drummer, recorded 28 improv shows, 48 hours, and mixed that down to 19 short pieces here, what he calls "organic beat music." The cast must shuffle in and out, with guitar (Jeff Parker) and vibes most common, and a bit of Marquis Hill trumpet the high point. B+(***) [bc] Nellie McKay: My Weekly Reader (2015, 429 Records): After her fine tribute to Doris Day, McKay moves into the 1960s, mostly Brit Invasion pop including the Kinks and Beatles, Herman's Hermits and Small Faces, "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" and "Red Rubber Ball," along with a few American tunes in that vein. B+(*) Levon Mikaelian: United Shades of Artistry (2014 [2015], self-released): Keyboardist-singer Mikaelian's name is nowhere obvious on the cover, but the hype sheet attributes the album to him, and the back cover lists him as composer, band leader, and producer, in a group which also includes guitar, bass, and drums/percussion. They build a tight little groove album, helped by guest slots for Gary Thomas on tenor sax (4 cuts) and Randy Brecker on trumpet (one). Just one vocal (more than enough). B [cd] Jason Miles/Ingrid Jensen: Kind of New (2014 [2015], Whaling City Sound): Miles is a keyboard player with fifteen records since 1994, many tributes like Celebrating the Music of Weather Report and 2 Grover With Love, plus a side interest in Brazil (including an Ivan Lins tribute). Then there's his connection to Miles Davis: well before his mediocre 2005 tribute Miles to Miles, he actually played for Davis (on Tutu, very close to the end of the line. Here he returns to Davis' fusion vibe with a first-rate trumpet player on familiar-sounding original material (plus one Wayne Shorter tune). Does sound a bit like Davis but writ small, even with a dozen guest spots scattered about. B [cd] Moonbound: Confession and Release (2005-07 [2008], Unsung): International prog-rock band, produced by Fabio Trentini who also plays and sings, with cohorts from Germany, Austria, and America. Not quite as awful as my reaction implies, but not worth sorting out why. C [cd] Van Morrison: Duets: Re-Working the Catalogue (2015, RCA): Sixteen songs, a few I recognize but nothing that showed up on, say, his canonical 1990 The Best of Van Morrison (although two songs repeat from 2007's 37-song Still on Top: The Greatest Hits). I'd also say that except for Taj Mahal he hasn't really sought out the top tier of possible duetists -- the only one I think adds much is Chris Farlowe ("Born to Sing"). B+(*) The Mountain Goats: Beats the Champ (2015, Merge): Looking back, comparing Robert Christgau's and my own grades for eight or so albums by John Darnielle's singer/songwriter vehicle, I see no real pattern: sometimes I'm up (The Sunset Tree, Heretic Pride), sometimes I'm down (All Eternals Deck, Transcendental Youth), and the splits seem arbitrary. So I can't tell you why I rate this one with the former two, above the latter two. Fact is I never follow lyrics closely enough to make fine distinctions. Also that Darnielle always sounds more coherent than whatever other singer/songwriters I'm listening to at the time. A- Curtis Nowosad: Dialectics (2014 [2015], Cellar Live): Drummer, second album, basic hard bop quintet lineup, with Derrick Gardner the standout on trumpet, Jimmy Greene on tenor/soprano sax, Steve Kirby on acoustic bass, and Will Bonness on piano. Liner notes describe this as "straight-ahead jazz" then offer "neo-hard bop" as an alternative. Certainly has fresh drive and sparkle within a proven framework. B+(***) [cd] Old Time Musketry: Drifter (2013 [2015], NCM East): Quartet: JP Schlegelmilch plays accordion and piano and writes most of the pieces, Adam Schneit plays tenor sax and clarinet and wrote two tunes, Phil Rowan is on bass and Max Goldman on drums/melodica. The accordion gives the melodies a thick, robust texture, a popular anchor no matter how everyone else twists and turns. A- [cd] Panda Bear: Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper (2015, Domino): Noah Lennox, like his well known group Animal Collective, makes a kind of prog psychedelia that is cleverly off-kilter often enough, but it always runs the risk of turning annoying, and not infrequently does. Imagine Sgt. Pepper, without the songs, done by Frank Zappa, without the jokes, then tone everything but the reverb down a couple notches. I know: surprising you have anything left. B The Paranoid Style: The Purposes of Music in General (2013, Bar/None, EP): Christgau recommends a cassette reissue (limited edition of 100) that adds four songs to this six song (23:42) EP -- title The Power of Our Proven System, the cover touting "A Decade of Excellence," "Includes Psychic Benefits!," "Now 33% More Paranoid!!" -- but this is the one I found. Timothy Bracy learned the indie craft in the Mendoza Line, and wife Elizabeth sings (probably more). A- The Paranoid Style: Rock and Roll Just Can't Recall (2015, Worldwide Battle, EP): Better recorded but slimmer at 5 songs, 16:21, and I suspect slighter too. B+(***) Sarah Partridge: I Never Thought I'd Be Here (2014 [2015], Origin): Singer-songwriter, jazz elements -- including Scott Robinson on tenor sax and flute -- but no standards here. Fifth album since 1998. B+(*) [cd] Kim Pensyl: Foreign Love Affair (2014 [2015], Summit): Commonly identified as a pop-jazz/new age keyboardist/trumpeter, has at least 17 albums since 1988. This one is respectable enough it could pass for mainstream jazz, but whereas jazz is normally collaborative (and often conflicted), Pensyl plays everything here -- bass, guitars, trumpet, flugelhorn, melodica, drums, and lots of piano. B [cd] Luis Perdomo & Controlling Ear Unit: Twenty-Two (2014-15 [2015], Hot Tone Music): Pianist, from Venezuela, based in New York, has a half-dozen albums. Trio, with Mimi Jones on bass and Rudy Royston on drums. B+(**) [cd] Natalie Prass: Natalie Prass (2015, Spacebomb): First album, long on strings, sometimes just talked (or whispered) through, oddly effective (although "It Is You" sounds like it belongs in a Disney cartoon). B+(*) Project Trio: Project Trio (2010, Project Trio): Flute-cello-bass trio (Greg Pattillo, Eric Stephenson, Peter Seymour). Two covers, one from Dave Brubeck ("Blue Rondo a la Turk"), the other Guns n' Roses ("Sweet Child o' Mine"). Helps that the flute is blown in sharp bursts, almost making up for the lack of a drummer. Also that the cello as well as the bass keeps this moving. B+(*) Rae Sremmurd: Sremm Life (2015, Eardrum/Interscope): Atlanta-based rap duo, doubt they are teens but they play at it, the beats chugging along, the hormones flowing, still not quite as much fun as they promise. B+(***) Raoul: The Spanish Donkey (2014 [2015], Rare Noise): Avant-jazz power trio, with Joe Morris on guitar, Jamie Saft on organ and keyboards, and Mike Pride on drums. Saft cuts a thick swath, and Morris is all muscle -- almost unsettlingly so. B [cdr] Mark Rapp: Token Tales (2008 [2009], Paved Earth): Trumpet player, first album, although he's had several since, including The Strayhorn Project with Don Braden. Feints toward funk at first, but shows wider range. B+(*) [cdr] Sachal: Slow Motion Miracles (2014 [2015], Okeh): Last name Vasandani, from Chicago, considered a jazz singer but isn't a standards guy, has three previous albums. Does have some vocal chops plus an easy-going lilt. Doesn't have any songs I care to hear again. B [cdr] Phil Sargent: A New Day (2010, Sargent Jazz): Guitarist, second album, has a couple side credits. Backed with bass and drums, plus piano on a couple cuts, and accompanied by Aubrey Johnson's voice -- attractive in song but annoying as scat. The guitar trends toward fusion, sometimes impressive. B- [cd] Lalo Schifrin: Invocations: Jazz Meets the Symphony #7 (2010 [2011], Aleph): Argentine pianist, worked with Dizzy Gillespie, hacked out a lot of soundtracks, wound up with this series of jazz tunes done by classical orchestra -- the ever-affordable Czech National Symphony Orchestra. Not without some stirring moments (notably "Groovin' High"), but still a sop to the old "high culture" snobbery. B [cd] Alex Sipiagin: Balance 38-58 (2014 [2015], Criss Cross): Trumpet/flugelhorn player, moved from Russia to US in 1991, has 16 albums since 1998. Mainstream player with serious chops, band here is fashionably postbop with David Binney (alto/soprano sax), Adam Rogers (guitar), John Escreet (piano), Matt Brewer (bass, sometimes electric), and Eric Harland (drums). Guitar is exceptionally well integrated. Last song turns rockish. B+(***) Bjørn Solli: Aglow: The Lyngør Project Vol. 1 (2013 [2015], Lyngør): Norwegian guitarist, third album, came up with an impressive line-up for this: Seamus Blake (tenor sax), Ingrid Jensen (trumpet), Aaron Parks (piano), Matt Clohesy (bass), Bill Stewart (drums). Lyngør is a small island village about 50 miles southwest of Oslo, the site of an 1812 navel battle, now considered one of Europe's best preserved villages (at least in 1991 -- no cars has something to do with this). Blake takes charge early. B+(**) [cd] Soulive: Rubber Soulive (2010, Royal Family): Organ trio, with Neal Evans on Hammond (and piano), Eric Krasno on guitar, and Alan Evans on drums. All Beatles songs (three Harrisons). I've said many times that the Beatles are unjazzable, but most of these tunes hold up relatively well to a layer of soul jazz funk. C+ [cdr] Sufjan Stevens: Carrie & Lowell (2015, Asthmatic Kitty): On some level an elegy for his late mother -- Lowell would be his step-father. The eleven songs are done simply, usually just his angelic folkie voice with minimal backing, not that you don't get glints of sparkle. B+(***) Dave Stryker: Messin' With Mister T (2014 [2015], Strikezone): Mainstream guitarist, has about thirty albums since 1991 which may (or may not) include his long-running group with saxophonist Steve Slagle. This one's a tribute to Stanley Turrentine, with organ (Jared Gold), drums (McLenty Hunter), extra percussion on half the tracks, and a parade of ten saxophonists, led off by Houston Person and ending with Tivon Pennicott -- two generations of Mr. T devotees. Class of the field: Chris Potter. B+(***) [cd] Earl Sweatshirt: I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside (2015, Columbia/Tan Cressida): Odd Future rapper, Thebe Kgositsile, born in Los Angeles, father a South African poet absent since six, mother a UCLA law professor. Short album, runs 29:56, beats dense and dull, as if the murk is its own reward. B+(*) Jacky Terrasson: Take That (2014 [2015], Impulse): Pianist from Germany, has a couple dozen albums since 1994. Backed with bass, drums, extra percussion (Adama Diarra, from Mali), four originals, seven covers, some with vocal scat/beatbox (Sly Johnson). B+(**) Times 4: Eclipse (2010, Groove Tonic Media): San Francisco quartet -- Greg Sankovich (keys), Kevin Lofton (bass), Lincoln Adler (sax), Maurice Miles (drums) -- third album, keep a sound groove going, sax has some bite to it. Better, I'd say, than the average Yellowjackets album, if that's your thing. B+(*) [cd] TRP (The Reese Project): Eastern Standard Time (2008 [2009], In the Groove): Flute player Tom Reese, Laurie Reese on cello, Bobby Brewer on guitar, Aaron Walker on drums, and a guest percussionist -- the strings show more affection for bluegrass, and the drummer makes sure no one thinks chamber jazz. B TRP (The Reese Project): Evening in Vermont (2011, Rhombus): Flute-player Tom Reese and cellist Laurie Reese replace guitar with piano -- yet another Reese, Kirk -- use a different drummer (Dave Young), and give a guest spot to Tish Brown (violin and viola). Several trad pieces, mostly upbeat, and an "All Wood" medley long on Norwegian. B- [cd] Steve Turre: Spiritman (2014 [2015], Smoke Sessions): Major trombone player, close to twenty albums sinjce 1987 , this a quintet with Bruce Williams (alto/soprano sax), Xavier Davis (piano), Gerald Cannon (bass), and Willie Jones III (drums). Strong trombone leads, nice shadowing with the sax, basic blues have the most oomph, but bop and ballads work too. B+(**) Unexpected: Munchies (2013 [2014], Fresh Sound New Talent): Spanish piano trio, led by Sergi Sirvent Escué (who wrote six of seven pieces), with Esteban Hernández on bass and Daniel Dominguez on drums. Sirvent has a very percussive style, ripping through these pieces. B+(***) Unhinged Sextet: Clarity (2014 [2015], OA2): Debut group album, seems like I've run across several of these guys before: Will Campbell (alto sax), Mike Olson (tenor sax), Vern Sielert (trumpet), Michael Kocour (piano), Jon Hamar (bass), Dom Moio (drums), all but the drummer contributing compositions. Postbop, group dynamic emphasizes harmony, turns slick -- group name strikes me as a misnomer. B [cd] Javier Vercher: Wish You Were Here (2014 [2015], Musikoz): Tenor saxophonist, from Spain, imposing over a first-rate rhythm section -- Lionel Loueke (guitar), Sam Yahel (piano), Larry Grenadier (bass), and Francisco Mela (drums). B+(***) [cd] The Michael Waldrop Big Band: Time Within Itself (2014 [2015], Origin): Drummer, studied at UNT and Memphis; played in Bob Belden's quartet, did big band arrangements for Pat Metheny, taught in Colorado and Washington, not sure where he is now but this conventional big band (plus guitar and vocals on two tracks) was recorded in Dallas with no one I've heard of. B [cd] Waxahatchee: Ivy Tripp (2015, Wichita): Katie Crutchfield, from Alabama, third album under this name but there are earlier ones with her sister Alison as PS Eliot. The least generic style suggested by AMG is "Twee Pop" but this isn't really either. It doesn't come easy, with an off-color dirge up front and an even slower, but more touching, "Half Moon" toward the end. B+(**) Leo Welch: I Don't Prefer No Blues (2015, Big Legal Mess): Delta bluesman, made his debut last year at 81 (Sabougla Voices) and he's evidently in a hurry now. Much grit in his voice, dirt in the guitar, and a hard-rocking band. Nothing Hound Dog Taylor hasn't already done, but it's been a while. B+(***) Lenny White: Anomaly (2010, Abstract Logix): Drummer, played with Chick Corea in Return to Forever in the 1970s, moving on to cut his own fusion projects, close to 20 albums since 1975. Some names I recognize in the band -- Tom Guarna (guitar), George Colligan (keyboards), Victor Bailey (bass) -- but much of the fine print is illegible. The thick fusion stew isn't really unlistenable, but nothing I hear makes me want to. (Well, sax isn't bad, but not much of it, and vocals are worse.) C+ [cd] Bradley Williams: Investigation (2014 [2015], 21st Century Entertainment, 2CD): Pianist, sings some, originally from Kansas, played in one of Woody Herman's herds. This seems to be his first album, one disc of swing-oriented instrumentals powered by a nine-piece band, a second with vocals -- Williams but mostly the ladies, Jennifer Graham and London McIlvane: "Solid Potato Salad," "Someone Else Is Steppin' In," "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," "Use Me," some Jobim and Veloso, "What a Little Moonlight Can Do." All but one of the instrumentals are Williams originals; the ringer, Duke Ellington. B+(***) [cd] Cassandra Wilson: Coming Forth by Day (2015, Legacy): One of many albums themed to honor Billie Holiday's centennary, in this case from a singer who approaches Lady Day's stature without in any way imitating her sound. Mostly strings, perhaps inspired by the maudlin death-bed Lady in Satin, the songs creep along, each trapped in its own gloomy dungeon of sound. More effective than I would have expected. B+(**) Mark Wingfield: Proof of Light (2014 [2015], Moonjune): British guitarist, has a dozen or so albums since 2001, some closer to classical, but most jazz, in this case reminding me of fusion, but more basic backed only with acoustic bass (Yaron Stavi) and drums (Asaf Sirkis). B [cd] Recent Reissues, Compilations, Vault DiscoveriesDavid Borden: Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments (1981 [2015], Spectrum Spools): Minimalist composer and electronic music pioneer, best known for leading one of the 1970s' most accessible avant-electronics groups, Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company. This set came from beta testing Robert Moog's modular synths, and while the repeating rhythmic figures come from minimalism it doesn't feel skimpy or sketchy at all -- if anything, over the top. B+(***) James Clay: The Kid From Dallas: Tenorman (1956-57 [2015], Fresh Sound): Tenor saxophonist, originally from Dallas but grew up in Los Angeles, was just 20 when his debut was recorded -- originally attributed to "The Lawrence Marable Quartet featuring James Clay," with Sonny Clark on piano, Jimmy Bond on bass, and Marable on drums. This adds six tracks, an earlier one with Bobby Timmons on piano, five later with Lorraine Geller, Red Mitchell, and (mostly) Billy Higgins. Straddles bebop, opening up on the blues. Younger than the more famous "Texas tenors" but he fits in. B+(***) Dance Mania: Ghetto Madness (1989-98 [2015], Strut): Collects various dance singles from Chicago house label Dance Mania -- nothing famous, the repeating artists are Jammin Gerald, DJ Deeon, and DJ Funk. Nearly every track is built on a minimalist repeating beat and line no longer than titles like "Pump That Shit Up" or "Give Me Ecstasy." B+(**) Highlife on the Move: Selected Nigerian & Ghanaian Recordings From London & Lagos 1954-66 (1954-66 [2015], Soundway, 2CD): Pre-juju, pre-Afrobeat (although there are two early Fela cuts), I'm tempted to say pre-highlife although that can't be true -- just early, coarsely developed, although the flow is seductive enough over the long haul. B+(***) Humphrey Lyttelton: Humphrey Lyttelton in Canada (1983 [2015], Sackville/Delmark): Trumpet player, a major figure in Britain's trad jazz movement from the late 1940s. A much younger Jim Galloway (baritone and soprano sax) joins him up front (including on the cover), with Ed Bickert (guitar), Neil Swainson (bass), and Terry Clarke (drums). Not really Lyttelton's prime, but a very strong outing for Galloway, who (by the way) just died in 2014. B+(***) LeAnn Rimes: All-Time Greatest Hits (1996-2007 [2015], Curb): Had a Patsy Cline-y hit, "Blue," as a 13-year-old, and has belted out ten albums since then, selling 37 million copies, but I doubt that she's ever recorded a better song. I thought her 2013 album Spitfire wasn't bad, but this stops with the chart hits in 2007. She's got a voice, but the arrangements are mostly dreck, and most of the songs don't even deserve better. C+ Old Music
Big Satan: I Think They Liked It Honey (1996 [1997], Winter & Winter): Free sax-guitar-drums trio -- Tim Berne (alto and baritone sax), Marc Ducret, and Tom Rainey -- the first of three albums under this group name (both had appeared in other Berne groups, together in Bloodcount). Quite remarkable when they break loose, but less commanding when they tangle up close. B+(***) John Carter & Bobby Bradford Quartet: Flight for Four (1969, Flying Dutchman): The first recording of a legendary avant-jazz quartet -- I doubt they were the first to set the "piano-less" two-horn quartet lineup free, but it later became one of the staple configurations for the art. Carter went on to play more clarinet, but he gets a harder edge on alto and tenor sax, clashing more vibrantly with Bradford's trumpet. With Tom Williamson on bass and Buzz Freeman on drums. Reissued in 2014 by International Phonograph and in 2015 by BGP (Ace). A- John Carter/Bobby Bradford: Self Determination Music (1970, Flying Dutchman): Presumably the same quartet as above, but only the leaders got their names on the packaging. Two cuts per side, 21-23 minutes, doesn't jump as high as the earlier album but makes up for that in intricacy. B+(***) Chris Farlowe: The R&B Years [Charly R&B Masters Vol. 5] (1962-67 [1994], Charly): John Henry Deighton, sometimes recorded as Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds, one of the 1960s British R&B singers/groups who didn't make the Invasion. Hard to tell how early this is -- it includes some songs that appeared as singles in 1965-67 on Immediate, but omits his 1964 hit ("Out of Time") and is padded out with early covers. B Milford Graves: Percussion Ensemble With Sunny Morgan (1965 [2003], ESP-Disk): Two drummers so the effect isn't far removed from a 33:56 drum solo -- more complex, with more tinkles for sure. Graves was 23 at the time, playing notably with New York Art Quartet, eventually destined to become something of a legend, albeit rarely recorded and little known. Morgan (more often Sonny), even more obscure, recorded into the mid-1970s. B+(*) Woody Herman and His Thundering Herd: Keep on Keepin' On: 1968-1970 (1968-70 [1998], Chess/GRP): Stumbled onto this and figured why not? Herman's heyday was in the late 1940s with his "Four Brothers" band, but Woody's Winners in 1965 was a second peak. This isn't. In fact, the big band stomp through contemporary pop fare like "Aquarius," "I Say a Little Prayer," "My Cherie Amour," "Smiling Phases," and "Light My Fire" is at best camp. But the Herd is as hot as ever, and they never flag through 13:43 of "Blues in the Night." B+(*) Eddie Higgins Quartet: My Funny Valentine (2004 [2006], Venus): A bebop pianist who cut his first album in 1958 and had added fifty more by his death in 2009. This is Higgins' third Quartet album "featuring Scott Hamilton" -- all standards, and the tenor saxophonist has rarely sounded more magnificent. With Jay Leonhart on bass and Joe Ascione on drums. A- Louis Jordan: Five Guys Named Moe (1943-46 [1993], Charly): I picked this up for $1.99 more than a decade ago, and never bothered with it partly because it comes with no documentation, nor is much available on the web -- the dates above come from AMG, but their review reads like a different disk. But one song clearly labels itself as a WWII-era V-Disc ("You Can't Get That No More"). Actually, this has 12 of Jordan's 14 V-Disc titles, plus eight more tracks. Not bad, but pails against MCA's more canonical The Best of Louis Jordan [1975 as 2LP, but also on CD] and Five Guys Named Moe: Vol. 2 [1992], or Proper's 4-CD budget box, Jivin' With Jordan. B+(**) [cd] Larry Levan Live at the Paradise Garage (1975-79 [2000], Strut/West End, 2CD): The hefty booklet of notes explains this was recorded live at Levan's Soho dance haven in 1979. It's a superb set of vintage disco 12-inchers, not the genre's greatest hits but not obscurities either. A- [cd] The Mendoza Line: Lost in Revelry (2002, Absolutely Kosher): Named for the shortstop whose lame batting average came to define the lower bound of acceptability even for a brilliant fielder (nine years in the majors, 1337 AB, 4 HR, 101 RBI, .215 BA). Fourth album (earliest on Rhapsody), band is low key alt, like their mentor adept at digging out grounders but unable to rack up any hits. B+(*) Tomasz Stanko: Bluish (1991 [1992], Power Bros.): Trumpet player, one of the few Polish jazz musicians to make a name in the West while still based in Communist Poland. Trio with two Norwegian stars: Arild Andersen on bass and Jon Christensen on drums. Not flashy, but draws out Stanko's lyricism. B+(***) Randy Weston: Blues to Africa (1974, Arista/Freedom): American jazz pianist, one of the first to take a serious interest in Africa for his compositions, not that the influence is all that clear from the music. This is solo, the last cut ("Sahel") with a spoken word bit. B+(**) Randy Weston/The Gnawa Master Musicians of Morocco: Spirit: The Power of Music (1999 [2003], Sunnyside): Recorded live in Brooklyn, Weston starts with solo jazz piano, adds bass and a couple Moroccan genbri, then the singers take over for three trad cuts, then everyone (including Talib Kibwe on flute and alto and Benny Powell on trombone). Not a synthesis but a party for sure. B+(***) Revised GradesSometimes further listening leads me to change an initial grade, usually either because I move on to a real copy, or because someone else's review or list makes me want to check it again:
Duke Ellington: The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971 [1991], Fantasy/OJC): One of Ellington's last recordings, only released a year after his death in 1974, for some reason I graded this low and forgot about it -- until someone reminded me that Morton-Cook selected it for a crown in the first edition of Penguin Guide for Jazz, although they dropped the crown in the second edition and never restored it, despite being more/less continuously in print. The Far East Suite (1966) is one of my favorite records, and I now hear faint echoes of that -- though I had to turn it up to get there. True that the band is starting to fray around the edges -- or at the center since Johnny Hodges died. [was: B] A- [cd] Notes:Everything streamed from Rhapsody, except as noted in brackets following the grade:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, April 13, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 24826 [24797] rated (+29), 398 [404] unrated (-6). Another sub-30 week, again just shy by one. Possible reason this week is that all those A- records took extra spins to verify, not to mention enjoy. (Except perhaps Heems, where I can't say my enjoyment was up to the grade, caught as the album is between sucking up to a jingoism that both of us know better than.) In fact, none of the A- records really blew me away: they're all huddled in the lower half of my 2015 list-in-progress (well, Marty Grosz and Old Time Musketry are just above the mid-point). So maybe I blew out my curve. Or maybe the stars just aligned. Expect a Rhapsody Streamnotes this week -- probably tomorrow. The draft file has 112 records at present. Certainly doesn't need any more -- longer than most since I switched to flexible scheduling. Still, closer to four weeks than three -- another dimension in which I'm slipping, if only a bit. With this week's bumper crop, the A-list is up to 27 records about 15 weeks into the year: still well below where I expect it to wind up (2014 is up to 156, not that I expect to listen to as much this year), and still tilted heavily toward jazz (17-10, counting Nascimento in the non-jazz, although that's pretty borderline). Thought I might try to drive out to EMP in Seattle this year, but I couldn't get organized in time. Instead, I'm suffering through one of the worst spring allergy funks I've had since moving to KS. My progress in cleaning up the office, sorting and shelving CDs, etc., has largely stalled -- albeit in a much better place than it was. The recent jazz sort has mostly been by grade, and I was a bit surprised to find that the shelves I allocated for recent B+(***) and higher jazz are well short of what I need. I've decided to start donating some CDs to WSU's library, and will try to dump the first box off later this week. The recycle dumpster, which I largely filled with paper more than a week ago, should be emptied in the morning, so I can resume packing it. Still have vast quantities of music magazines I'll never do anything constructive with. Hate to just throw them away, but it doesn't look like I'll have any takers. I've fallen way behind in many other projects -- notably a much needed update to Robert Christgau's website. Also failing to make any progress on my own larger writing projects. Hard even to read much when your eyes are bleary and you can hardly breathe. Probably hasn't helped my productivity that I've fallen into watching more TV than in ages -- even such obvious trainwrecks as American Crime (just completely dispicable), The Good Wife (a former good show gone bad -- half-dedicated to killing off Kalinda Sharma [at least Will Gardner went quick], half drowning Alicia in a political campaign we always thought she was too smart to get taken by, and ending it as badly as possible), and Empire (probably the worst season finale I've ever seen). At least still hoping that Justified will end in decent shape. (Finally finished the second season of Orange Is the New Black, and that finale was remarkably satisfying.) Another week without tweet reviews. Just been hard hanging in there. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old records rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Saturday, April 11, 2015 Weekend Roundup
A couple months ago, the Koch's made news by threatening to raise just shy of $1 billion for their war on democracy in 2016. Suddenly, that doesn't look like such a daunting amount of money. And the fact is, Clinton is probably a good investment for her big-money donors -- at least compared to the sort of morons running for the Republican nomination. And while the middle class aren't likely to get much from Clinton, they're not where that $2.5 billion is coming from. Main thing they can hope for is less collateral damage in the partisan struggle between pro-growth money and the people who'd rather wreck the economy than see any of their spoils levelled down. I've paid very little attention to the Republicans who aspire to be president. The "tea party" reaction did little more than double down on the dumbest, crudest platforms of the party, and now there is nothing left there. For example, one thing that has been popping up a lot is the idea of convening a constitutional convention to pass an amendment forbidding the federal government from running a deficit. They might as well poke their eyes out -- that's the level of self-mutilation such an amendment would produce. Clinton has nothing to offer, but at least she's not that stupid. Or take Iran: Clinton has frequently made her mark as a hawk, but she's not so delusional as to think we'd be better off rejecting negotiations with Iran that gave us every assurance we wanted. I opposed Clinton in 2008 and I would do so again given any real chance of winning something tangible. But I don't see who else is going to raise the sort of money she can raise, and more and more it looks like that money will be needed to make it plain enough how necessary it is to beat the Republicans in 2016. I just hope to see some of that money trickle down the party ticket. Some more scattered links this week:
Also, a few links for further study:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, April 6, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 24797 [24768] rated (+29), 404 [399] unrated (+5). Close enough to thirty, which is, after all, only an arbitrarily roundish number, I doubt I have any need to apologize. Or even note that the 29th record (Bradley Williams') was a double which got more plays than needed because it made for good ambiance while focusing on last night's Iran opus. Two new A- records, although if so inclined you might enjoy Leo Welch or Rae Sremmurd as much. Welch's 2014 debut, Sabgoula Voices, made a deeper impression, possibly because it came first. Christgau likes Sremm Life, but I didn't find the "party rap" as fun as advertised -- then again I didn't give it the second and third plays rap records often need. The other high B+ items are more certainly where they belong. Two old-music A- records, too. I played the second Carter-Bradford first and had it at A-, then dialed it back when Flight for Four came in much clearer. The records show up now because I gather they've been reissued on one of Ace's labels (BGP?), but the digital copies correspond to the original Flying Dutchman LPs, so I credit them as such. If Ace -- one of the world's premier reissue companies -- wants to start sending me shit, I'll show them more respect. Rhapsody listed the Eddie Higgins album under Scott Hamilton. I always jump on unheard Hamilton, and he really shines on these standards. Van Morrison's useless Duets got me to check up on Chris Farlowe, but I only found the one early compilation and doubt that it's as good as could be -- holes include his only UK hit single. He does have the only voice on the album that adds something to Morrison's, but evidently he didn't always have it. I've finally made some significant progress at sorting out the many piles and baskets of CDs that made walking in my office area treacherous. I had the idea that I could put all of the Jazz CG A-/B+(***) CDs into seven of those cheap $20 CD cases -- six on a desk blocking the window behind me, one to my left for the most recent ones -- but I keep finding more such records. Plan B is to empty out two more cases that currently house especially interesting B+(**) records and fill them up with surplus B+(***). Anything graded lower goes into storage downstairs, unless it's by someone I keep in the upstairs shelves. Unless I slow down, I should make it through the rest in another week. After that, I'll be able to move around enough to install a new router and a long-planned network upgrade. The next huge mess will be sorting out the tools. It's possible that I have enough storage now for all of the books and CDs, but I'm feeling increasing pressure to finally start weeding out the least useful items. I've never sold CDs -- I did sell off most of my vinyl when I moved from New Jersey in 1999 (a bad experience) -- so I'm inclined to start donating them (Wichita State University is interested). (I know I've threatened/promised to do this before, but this time seems likely to actually happen.) I figure I'll work on this gradually, in batches of 100 or so, and see how it feels. In deference to the efficiencies of the market, I'd consider running a private sale list if anyone wants to pick up something I'd otherwise give away. Let me know, and if there's enough interest I'll put something together. One of the first things that should go is the hoard of music mags I've been saving up over the last fifteen years (I doubt if there's anything older than the 1999 move). One reason I kept these was that I was thinking of going back through them and extracting quotes for my long-planned music review website. It's pretty clear now that I'm never going to do that. (There may still be a site with a lot of my writing but not with that research investment.) There should be complete decade-or-longer sets of Jazz Times, Downbeat, and Cadence (except for the last year or two). Also large stacks of Wire and Blender, Signal to Noise and Mojo, and scattered other titles. I've organized everything from upstairs but that still leaves a row about eight feet long in the basement plus a large bin full of Cadence. Any (or all) of that is free to the first person who wants to haul it off. WSU isn't interested, although I may get them to post a notice for their students. (I may change my mind and keep Wire, although I stopped buying new ones several years ago.) Rolling Stone is already gone. Recycle bin is currently full of paper, but won't be picked up for another week. I thought about driving to EMP this year, but couldn't get myself organized in time. Everyone tells me it's interesting, plus I have an ulterior motive, in that I want to track down some long estranged relatives in Washington. So I still want to make the trip sooner or later this year. Just not this week. Did manage to knock out tweets on the new records this week. I also passed on a link to Old Time Musketry's Gather, which is on Bandcamp here. I imagine I'll do a Rhapsody Streamnotes later this week. Draft file is currently close to 90 records. New records rated this week:
Old records rated this week:
Grade changes:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Sunday, April 5, 2015 Weekend Roundup (Iran Edition)I've been groping for some handle on understanding last week's deal between the US and Iran. The deal is very good news. What it means is that certain crazy people will not pre-emptively launch a disastrous war to impose their will secured in their conviction that they represent a higher power. (Not that those people -- "neocons" in the US along with their allies in the ruling camp in Israel -- are taking this agreement lying down. They're doing everything they can to undo it, as it both admits exception to their cherished prerogative to start wars, it also normalizes one of their most successful fear-inducing bogeymen.) It also suggests that key leaders in the US may have learned something from the Bush debacle in Iraq -- even though the return of US troops to Iraq to fight ISIS shows that they haven't learned enough. The Iran Nuclear Scare is almost precisely a repeat of the Great WMD Scare that led up to the Bush invasion of Iraq in 2003. The theat was invented largely from whole cloth, and sold on the basis of a paranoia largely rooted in Israel (where every conceivable enemy is quickly seen as Hitler reincarnate). The only possible solution was held to be regime change, and while one held hope that the Iraqi/Iranian people would rise up and throw off their oppressive regimes, the only timely way to affect that is to invade and conquer. (Fortunately, secure in the conviction that we will be greeted as liberators.) Of course, Bush could have negotiated with Iraq in 2002-03. Iraq had allowed UN weapons inspectors full access and they were well on the way toward establishing that Iraq had none of the proscribed WMD, a finding which should have defused the crisis. But Bush wanted war, not just to save us from the threat of imaginary WMD but to show the world what US power could do, and that resistance to US power would be futile. And Bush hadn't just aimed at overthrowing Iraq: he conured up an "Axis of Evil" to serve notice to Iran (Iraq's mortal enemy) and North Korea (even more isolated from Iraq and Iran than from the US) that they would be the neocons' next target. While the US invasion of Iraq was overwhelming, the occupation soon fell into disarray and disaster, something the US survived by playing Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds off against each other. In the end, what Iraq proved was not the invincibility of American power but how inept, corrupt, and clueless it really was. (Of course, that lesson was already available from the occupation of Afghanistan a little more than a year earlier, but disaster there unfolded more slowly, probably because Bush didn't put as much effort there.) At the time it was widely recognized that Iran and North Korea would be more formidable military opponents than Iraq -- one widely quoted neocon line was, "anyone can go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran." Iran is much larger, with over three times as many people. Although its military struggled to a draw with Iraq over eight years in the 1980s, it hadn't been degraded after 1990 like Iraq's: it still has an air force, a navy, a substantial number of missiles which could conceivably hit US bases in the region (although not the US directly). Iran could conceivably block shipping through the Straits of Hormuz, which would greatly reduce the world supply of oil. Iran had also cultivated allies abroad -- notably Hezbollah in Lebanon -- that could conceivably retaliate against a US strike on Iran. Given all that had gone wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all that could go wrong with Iran, we are fortunate that cooler heads prevailed. As for North Korea, the US military had even less interest in indulging neocon fantasies -- despite the fact that North Korea (alone among the Axis of Evil) actually had programs to develop nuclear bombs and intercontinental missiles (successfully testing a bomb in 2006 and twice since). Even assuming that China wouldn't come to North Korea's aid, as they did in the stalemated 1950-53 war that cost the lives of over 35,000 US soldiers, North Korea is the most thoroughly militarized and best bunkered nation on earth. Moreover, their primary threat should war start is a mass of thousands of pieces of large artillery aimed at South Korea's capital, Seoul (pop. 10 million): they could kill thousands almost instantly without bringing out the nukes. It's worth noting that during the 1989-92 thaw when the Soviet Union broke up and Communist governments collapsed from Mongolia to Albania, the only ones that survived were the ones that had fought most directly with the US, and (aside from China) had consequently been singled out for punitive sanctions: North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. Similarly, US sanctions against Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya only served to harden those regimes. Presumably, all this experience finally weighed in for Obama as he chose to negotiate rather than continue the malign neglect that US presidents had long considered the more prudent course. Cuba is another example, but Iran has been more difficult for Obama not so much because there was ever anything to worry about in Iran's "nuclear program" as because Iran has been caught up in the neocons' ideology, the increasing Islamophobia of the "terror wars," and Israel's own calculated Holocaust anxiety. The basic fact is that America's relationship with Iran got off on the wrong foot in 1953 and we've never had the self-consciousness to recognize that or the will to repair the damage. Iran was never officially a European colony but in the 1800s England and Russia took advantage of the weakness of the Qajar dynasty and obtained various rights and privileges at the expense of Iranian sovereignty -- for instance, an English company (BP, formerly Anglo-Iranian) was bought very cheaply exclusive rights to all the oil in Iran. After the Russian Revolution, Lenin renounced Russian interests in Iran, but the British hung on, and in the 1940s deposed the first Shah Reza Pahlavi (the first post-Qajar Shah), replacing him with his more compliant son, Reza Mohammed Pahlavi, but shifting authority (if now power) toward the Majlis -- Iran's parliament. By 1953, Mohammad Mossadeq was Prime Minister, and he had nearly unanimous support within the Majlis to confiscate British oil holdings in Iran. Mossadeq was very popular both in Iran and in America, which he had recently visited. But when Eisenhower became president, his security team (the Dulles brothers, one secretary of state, the other head of the CIA) were persuaded by the British that Iran had become a hotbed of Communist insurrection, so they set in motion a coup to overthrow Mossadeq. The result was that Mossadeq was imprisoned, the Majlis was suspended, the Shah became an absolute despot, and Anglo-Iranian's oil interests were sold to a consortium of mostly US oil companies. (For more details, see Stephen Kinzer's book, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror [2003].) The coup was run by a CIA operative named Kermit Roosevelt, a son of president Theodore Roosevelt. Two aspects of the story struck me as particularly telling. The atmosphere for the coup was started by staging various demonstrations in Tehran, and for the counter-demonstrations Roosevelt mostly bribed local imams -- one of the first instances of CIA alliances with Muslim clergy. The second was that when Mossadeq realized he was in trouble, he went to the US embassy hoping his American friends would help him, when in fact they were running the coup. (Under Truman the US had not infrequently leaned against British efforts to restore their prewar empire.) Of course, the US was delighted by the post-coup Shah, and didn't even mind when he finally did what Mossadeq had set out to and nationalized Iranian oil. (He did, after all, sell the oil through American companies, and had no qualms about selling oil to Israel.) The Shah bought weapons from the US and built a vicious police state which suppressed all opposition -- the communists, socialists, liberals, and just as well conservative clergy like Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who went into exile in 1964 after denouncing a "status of forces agreement" which would give US soldiers stationed in Iran immunity from Iranian law. The Shah became an increasingly hated figure in Iran and was deposed by massive street demonstrations in 1979. At the time the Shah fled, the revolution was a broad coalition of left and right, but after Khomeini returned he was able to consolidate power in the clergy, largely based on his longstanding critique of the Shah as an American puppet. At this point many Americans were delighted to see the Shah deposed, but the relationship between Americans and the revolution turned sour after Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah to take refuge in the US. Remembering Mossadeq's folly at the US embassy in 1953, a group of Iranian "students" seized the embassy and held 52 Americans hostage there for over a year. (They were released immediately after Ronald Reagan became president. It is widely believed that the Reagan campaign, fearing an "October surprise," secretly negotiated with Iran to keep the hostages until after the 1980 election.) The US was alternately upset at losing its client and influence and at its own impotence at securing the return of its diplomats. Khomeini, for his part, found it useful to blame the US both for the Shah and for Iran's post-revolution isolation. Khomeini caused further problems in attempting to exploit his notoriety for standing up to the US (the "great satan" rhetoric comes from this period) to export Iran's revolution elsewhere in the Middle East -- notably to Saudi Arabia, and more effectively to Lebanon, torn up by its own civil war. The US, meanwhile, rallied its Sunni clients around the Persian Gulf against Iran, and they largely bankrolled Iraq's war against Iran. That war lasted from 1980-88, with horrendous losses on both sides, but especially to Iran. Carter had previously declared the Persian Gulf as a strategic interest of the US and started building bases around the Gulf. US troops occasionally clashed with Iran: shooting down a civilian airliner, attacking an offshore Iranian oil rig. Under Reagan, the US sold arms to Iran via Israel (embarrassingly, and illegally, what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal), then tilted toward Iraq and sold arms to Saddam Hussein. After the Iran-Iraq War, oil prices tanked and Iraq was pressed to repay war debt to Kuwait. Hussein answered by invading Kuwait, but was ejected in 1990 by a multinational force led by the US, with Syria an ally and Iran a supportive non-combatant. Since then the US and Iran have often had their interests in the region align, but the US was unable to let go of past affronts -- let alone to own up to its own past transgressions. From Independence Day (1948), Israel pursued a strategy to ally with non-Arabs against Arabs throughout the Middle East. This led to close relationships with Turkey and Iran as well as subversive support for Marionites in Lebanon and Kurds in Iraq. After the revolution, Israel continued to enjoy a close relationship with Iran, which even extended to bombing Iraq's nuclear center during the Iraq-Iran War, and acting as a conduit for American arms under Iran-Contra. After the 1990 Gulf War, Iraq ceased to be a serious threat to Israel, so Israel cast about and decided that Iran would work as an existential threat to justify maintaining the high level of Israeli militarism. The main reason Iran worked was that American officials were already primed to view Iran as a renegade and enemy. As it happens, Iran had started a fledgling nuclear program with US support under the Shah, so Israel could point to the reactor project as a development path toward nuclear weapons. From there it was a short step to the equation: Islamic fanaticism + nuclear weapons = Judeocide. Israeli leaders started projecting that Iran was five years or less away from testing a nuclear bomb as early as 1996. That it has never happened -- that Iran has disavowed any intention of developing nuclear bombs, that Iran continues to belong to the NPT, that IAEA inspectors have never shown any evidence of bomb development, that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa declaring that nuclear bombs are contrary to Islam -- has never led Israel to tone down its hysteria, nor has it phased the credulity of American politicians, often shameless in their devotion to all things Israeli. Moreover, if anything the level of Israeli hysteria jumped a notch when Netanyahu became Prime Minister in 2009. At that time Obama gave former Senator George Mitchell the task of negotiating a peace between Israel and the Palestinians -- something Netanyahu could not possibly be bothered with discussing as long as Israel was at the mercy of Iranian bombsights (although Netanyahu had plenty of time to plan more illegal settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank). And now that there is a deal which ensures that Israel will never be threatened by the prospect of an Iranian bomb, Netanyahu is pulling out stops in his haste to scuttle the deal. It seems that the only thing Netanyahu fears more than Iran developing nuclear weapons is Iran signing a detailed, verifiable deal that precludes any possibility of developing nuclear weapons and which ends the isolation and hostility that has pushed Iran into such a defensive posture that there seemed to be a need for nuclear deterrence. It's as if Israel's worst fear is living in a world where it has no existential enemies, except perhaps living in a world where Jews and non-Jewish Arabs enjoy equal rights and justice. The great irony of the deal is that Obama seems to have taken Israel's concerns so literally that he held out and wore Iran down until the point where he could deliver the most ironclad assurance to Israel possible. Indeed, the deal is so strong it's hard not to see any opponent of the deal as a completely bonkers warmonger -- an interesting trap for Netanyahu and for the Republicans who instinctively assume that anything Obama would agree to must be weak-kneed appeasement. The more interesting question is why would Iran agree to such restrictions on rights they regard as their under the NPT, rights that many other nations are clearly allowed. (Germany and Japan, for instance, have such extensive nuclear facilities and know how that their "breakout" time is unlikely to be more than a few months.) One is that Iran's leader must realize that while having the skills and know how to build a bomb may offer some prestige, the weapons themselves are effectively unusable, so giving them up is hardly a sacrifice. One might argue that nuclear weapons mean deterrence against foreign attack, but Iran's most threatening enemies are Israel and the US, and Iran has no hope of winning an arms race with either. (Pakistan and India came close to a fourth war in 2002. The fact that both had demonstrated nuclear weapons by then may have contributed to the cool down, but so did other factors like the chilling effect war would have had on foreign investment. South Africa developed nuclear weapons but they turned out to be useless against their own beleaguered majority, let alone against world opinion. Israel's nuclear weapons may have ended any hopes by neighboring Arab countries of ending Israel's existence, but by the time they became public knowledge Egypt was suing for peace and Syria had no hopes without Egyptian support.) It's also possible that Iran's interest in nuclear power has waned, particularly has oil prices have dropped and the popularity of nuclear power in Japan and Germany has plummeted -- right now only India seems to be particularly bullish on nuclear power. That leaves things like medical isotopes as something Iran can continue to work on -- a mere fig leaf for all the investment, but ending sanctions and normalizing relations and trade is worth much more, especially in the short term. Indeed, given the intransigence the US has displayed in perpetuating its view of its enemies, one has to wonder what else Iran could have created to trade for normalcy. The costs to Iran of sanctions have been great, but the costs to the US from isolating Iran -- mostly slightly higher oil costs and extra defense spending, both of which have influential political beneficiaries in the US -- have been trivial. Some Iran links:
If I had the time, I could probably dig up many more links -- e.g., Philip Weiss: The epic season of spinning the Iran deal begins!, Gareth Porter: Iran Won Upfront Sanctions Relief, but With Potential Snags, Rachel Shabi: Poof! There goes Netanyahu's Iran bogeyman (ever hear of the "Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis"?), Paul Waldman: The Insane Logic Underlying Republican Opposition to the Iran Deal, Josh Marshall: The Emerging GOP War Platform. Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, March 30, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 24768 [24735] rated (+33), 399 [409] unrated (-10). Average week, but the mix below is a little peculiar. I've been trying to declutter. I have these 13x15.75-inch Stearlite plastic baskets that hold two rows of CDs, about 75-80 total. Back when Jazz CG was jumping, I used two baskets to hold the incoming queue, and sorted them somewhat, so one basket had a row of unpromising shit and a row of vocals, while the other basket had instrumental jazz, sometimes sorted further but more often not. Under this scheme the unpromising shit almost never got touched, so most of it still dates from before the initial sort -- 2011 or 2012, maybe even 2010. Sometime last year I started filing the vocals with the new jazz. Couple weeks ago I merged the baskets, so now I have one basket, with the row of the old unpromising shit on the left and everything else on the right. Under this scheme I've finally started to deplete the left(over) row, and you'll see a fair amount of 2008-10 "new" releases below. Some are not as bad as I expected -- Chris Massey, Project Trio, Times 4, Bossa Brasil -- but none (so far) are things I'm ever likely to want to play again. Some of the incentive for running through this queue is to get them out of my sight. After I play them, if they are graded B+(**) or less and are by someone I don't have a serious interest in (by definition, for the "unpromising shit" row), then go into another basket. When that basket fills up, I haul it downstairs and empty it into an unsorted shelf unit full of similar records that I can't imagine ever wanting to play again. (These are not necessarily "bad" records -- by definition, anything B+ is actually pretty good, but it's all relative. Unless I'm travelling or something, I almost never play as many as ten previously graded records in a week -- for pleasure or nostalgia or whatever. In a house with, conservatively, ten thousand CDs, well, you do the math.) When that downstairs shelf unit fills up -- actually, it's the last of three with open space -- I'll be in a quandry. When I moved to Kansas in 1999 I sold off 90% of my LPs for a pittance (35-cents apiece), more to avoid the shipping costs than for what little money I made. I've never sold surplus CDs -- in part because the only decent used stores here shut down long ago -- but I imagine it would wind up being the same miserable experience. I could build more shelves, but I'm running out of space, not to mention patience. Best idea I've come up with is to donate the surplus to a local library. I took a step and contacted Wichita State University last week. Getting cold feet now, but I do need to do something. My main goal over the next month or so is to get rid of all the baskets on the floor except for my one incoming queue. (Looking around, I count nine, plus a couple hundred CDs in front of other CDs in a bookcase. Also need to get several piles of books off the floor.) I'm not exactly a hoarder, but I do have too much shit. One cluster of exceptional records here comes from Robert Christgau's Expert Witness last week: The Paranoid Style and The Close Readers, two groups I had never heard of -- indeed, their 2013-14 records never appeared in my metacritic files. I sorted the Paranoid Style's EP a bit differently, but remarkable finds. No less obscure is my jazz pick, Gabriel Amargant. My new jazz queue got very short before some late-week mail game in, so I was scrounging around for some new jazz on Rhapsody. It's been several years since I received whole batches of Fresh Sound New Talent releases, but I've been finding them fairly reliably on Rhapsody, and I've checked out a few names I'm familiar with, but Amargant was a total unknown to me. Still, with nothing else obvious to choose, I looked him up and was blown away. Reminds me that when I did get whole batches, about half of the releases were Spanish artists and I found a fair number of worthwhile records there -- still, few as good as this one. The other A- this week is by Courtney Barnett. An Australian, she got a fair amount of attention for her "Double EP" compilation last year, A Sea of Split Peas (finished 59th in Pazz & Jop). Still, this first real album is a huge leap forward. For whatever it's worth, I also came real close to giving Action Bronson an A-. I finally backed off because I have a hard time following rap lyrics, especially on computer, and I suspect he's something of an asshole. I could be wrong, and sometimes the music overcomes my doubts. But after three plays, the lower grade felt right. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old records rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Sunday, March 29, 2015 In the DarkNo Weekend Roundup this week. Got distracted with what follows, and time got away from me. But if I had the time, the thing to focus on this week is Saudi Arabia's intervention in Yemen. This isn't the first time -- Saudi Arabia and Egypt were fighting in Yemen in the mid-1960s -- but they've never been this overt about it (possibly because Egypt seems to be on their side this time). The US should be appalled, expecially since it's being done with US-manufactured armaments. The UN should condemn this blatant aggression, sanction all countries contributing to war in Yemen, and try to arrange a democratic resolution between the eleven distinct armed groups vying for power there. And needless to say, if democracy is the goal, Saudi Arabia and Egypt cannot be the solution. When I started writing this blog, I would include more or less short notes whenever I saw a movie, along with grades, but at some point I stopped doing so. I still have some rough notes in my scratch file for movies that date back to 2011-12 (Hugo: B+; The Skin I Live In: B+; The Lincoln Lawyer: A-; Source Code: B+). It seems like we see fewer movies each year. Four independent theaters have closed since we moved to Wichita in 1999, leaving us with Bill Warren's monopoly, and Warren got rid of an older theater that he used for relatively arty films -- said he was looking for a "higher use" for the property and wound up selling it to a church. At the time he promised he'd keep showing those films in his other theaters "because his wife liked them," but within a year he divorced her, too. We also haven't rented movies since moving here -- a fairly regular occurrence when we had a store around the corner in Boston. We've been watching more TV series, but not many films on TV. I wrote a long post about American Sniper the other day, but didn't wrap it up in a capsule review, so I thought I'd do that here, and round it out with the rest of the little we saw from 2014. I also went back and checked for releases in 2012 and 2013. I would have guess that the number of movies I've seen last year was down, but I came up with 20 in 2014, only 18 in 2013, and 20 in 2012. I can remember back in Boston it seems like we must have seen one or more per week, but those days are long gone. These are collected from various annual release lists, so may well be incomplete -- it's also possible that my memory is fading. The Lego Movie (Feb. 1): Animated, got rather amazing hype when it came out. Lots of famous actor-voices, with Will Ferrell as the villain, Lord Business. I suppose there is a lesson there about capitalism, which I might have appreciated more had not everything else been so annoying. C+ 300: Rise of an Empire (Mar. 4): Sequel to 2007 film 300 (which I haven't seen), based on ancient Greek war legends as Sparta and/or Athens battles Persia, tied to an unpublished Frank Miller graphic novel which raises everyone and every thing to the level of war porn. Of course, as porn I enjoyed Eva Green (Artemisia) much more than Sullivan Stapleton (Themistocles), even though with the fate of civilization at stake she was consigned to the wrong side. [TV] B- The Grand Budapest Hotel (Mar. 6): Wes Anderson movie, based on various writings by Stefan Zweig, mostly set before and during WWII, told through flashbacks from much later. The hotel appears to be not in Budapest but somewhere in the Austrian Alps -- at least in some mountains somewhere in Central Europe. Remarkably deep cast; Oscar wins for production design, costume design, makeup and hair. Quite a story too. [Saw it a second time on TV] A- Noah (Mar. 10): Bible epic from Darren Aronofsky, although it could have come from one of those graphic novels, especially as the "Watchers" take over. God destroys the world, but the decision as to whether mankind should expire seems to be Noah's, and he's in a foul mood. Happy ending, of course. [TV] B- Ida (May 2): Polish movie, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, nominated for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, about a sheltered orphan girl raised in a convent from WWII seeking insight into her past. Turns out her parents were Jewish, killed by a farmer who hid her in a convent. More interesting is her aunt, a lawyer who joins the search, and pays a terrible price. In black and white, slow and heavy. [TV] B+ Belle (May 2): The story of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay, the daughter of a British Captain Sir John Lindsay and an enslaved African woman in the West Indies, adopted in 1765 and raised as a "free gentlewoman" by Linday's uncle, William Murray, Earl of Mansfield and Lord Chief Justice (a perfect role for Tom Wilkinson), who eventually writes a key legal ruling that advances the cause of abolition. A- Boyhood (June 11): Richard Linklater film, shot over 12 years as its principal subject (played by Ellar Coltrane) grows up from six to eighteen, from first grade to leaving home for college, and less closely follows his sister (a couple years older), mother (Patricia Arquette's Oscar role), estranged father (Ethan Hawke, who was evidently absent for most of the previous six years but takes a consistent interest here). Several ill-chosen stepfathers come and go, which provides most of the stress and strain. It all seems rather eventful and remarkable compared, say, to my own life, but also quite ordinary, which is the charm. I left hoping they had shot enough extra footage to craft a Girlhood starring older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater). Otherwise this will remain unique. A Snowpiercer (June 27): Directed by Joon-ho Bong from a French graphic novel, depicts a future dystopia where the class system is rigidly stratified from the back to the front of a train endlessly racing through frozen wastes. The oppressed masses in the back revolt and try to seize the master in the front. The class analysis became more interesting in retrospect once the action subsided. [TV] B The Hundred-Foot Journey (August 8): Lasse Hallström food film, with Helen Mirren running a Michelin-star restaurant in the south of France, Indian emigre patriarch Om Puri setting up shop across the street, his son (Manish Dayal) developing into a chef good enough for Mirren to poach, and Charlotte Le Bon as intermediary. The food itself is a little over-the-top, and the story is a bit pat, but both are easy to enjoy. B+ A Most Wanted Man (July 25): Film of a John Le Carré novel starring the late Philip Seymour Hofman as a dissheveled German spy chief, who finds and attempts to use a Chechen refugee to trap a Muslim philanthropist into disclosing a financial conduit to a terrorist organization. The CIA gets involved, turning all of Hofman's reassurances into lies. With Le Carré the fiasco may be the point, but one still expects more of the world within movies. B Magic in the Moonlight (July 25): Woody Allen movie, with Colin Firth as a illusionist/sceptic who's not skeptical enough, and Emma Stone as a charlatan and love interest. Suffers from some of the worst philosophizing of Allen's career -- reminiscent of his earliest movies but less funny. I wouldn't have minded so much, but Laura went beyond hating this and spent the second half heckling. B Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Aug. 27): Oscar-winning movie by Alejandro Iñárritu, about an actor (Michael Keaton), a big star in Hollywood playing a cartoon superhero ("Birdman") seeking to salvage his acting credentials by staging a Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Carver story. Problems ensue, including a scene-stealing co-star (Edward Norton) and the vow of a critic (played by Lindsay Duncan) to pan the opening. Many continuous pan shots turn the theater into a labyrinth, adding to the claustrophobia. Even more annoying were the frequent lapses into fantasy or magic -- Keaton levitating, smashing objects, quarrelling with his Birdman alter-ego. At the climax of his opening, Keaton takes a real gun instead of the stage prop and kills himself -- the ending the movie seemed to be aiming at -- but not even that came off right: we find out that he merely shot his nose off, and that the critic came around for the guy willing to spill his own blood for art. Then he jumps out the hospital window and flies away -- I suppose as Birdman repossesses him. Not without its virtues -- Emma Stone's supporting role is one -- but pretty full of shit. B Nightcrawler (Sept. 5): Jake Gyllenhaal plays a crook and self-help devotee who finds his calling in shooting gory video at car wrecks and crime scenes -- he's advised, "if it bleeds, it leads" -- and selling it to news broadcasters. He then finds that he can get even more sensational footage by orchestrating the events -- in particular, he stages a shootout between cops and home invaders he tracked down. Creepy. B+ The Imitation Game (Sept. 27): Benedict Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing (mathematician, cryptanalyst, a major figure in the development of computer science), focusing on his work during WWII in breaking Germany's Enigma encryption codes, but extending from grade school to his arrest for homosexuality in 1952 and death in 1954. The latter events were ghastly by any standards, and they make Turing a martyr, but the film plays this up in all sorts of perverse ways, making Turing appear more dysfunctional and stranger than he actually was, distorting his work, and consigning his colleagues at Bletchley to the sidelines, cheering or (more often) booing as he solves all the problems single-handedly. (See Wikipedia's section on "Accuracy" -- the longest I've ever seen.) Keira Knightley has a nice supporting role, again riddled with inaccuracies but something the movie could have used more of. B- Gone Girl (Oct. 3): David Fincher film of a bestselling novel which Laura and virtually all of her friends had read. Rosamund Pike plays the wicked wife who frames her husband, played by Ben Afleck, for her murder, and he's guilty enough the charges have some traction. Of course, a body would help, but she loses nerve and doesn't go through with her planned suicide. Instead, she returns to a former boyfriend, finds him a bore, murders him, and passes it off as self-defense. Many times you see a movie and leave wondering what happens next, but with these people it's impossible to care (and probably ridiculous to boot). B+ Inherent Vice (Oct. 4): Paul Thomas Anderson film of a Thomas Pynchon novel, set in southern California in the 1970s, with close to a dozen odd characters improbably interconnected in multiple ways -- all that looping back has a whiff of conspiracy, but my brief familiarity with Pynchon (V. is my all-time favorite novel; I failed to get through Gravity's Rainbow but still intend to finish it some day) suggests that's just the way the world is wired. Doesn't feel like a great movie, but a persistently interesting one. A- St. Vincent (Oct. 24): Bill Murray plays a surly Vietnam Vet -- smokes, drinks, gambles, has a wife with Alzheimer's in a nursing home he can't afford and a Russian prostitute (Naomi Watts) in his bed when he can; otherwise he's just a dirtbag and asshole, until he reluctantly befriends a neighbor kid (starting with a scam for babysitting money). The kid goes to Catholic school, and evidently the only thing they teach there is saints, so when he get an assignment to write up "a real-life saint" he does some research and settles on Murray. Probably the best scene is when some mobsters try to shake him down for money he has a stroke and creeps them out. What creeped me out was the sanctimoniousness over his Vietnam "service." B- American Sniper (Nov. 11): Clint Eastwood's Iraq War film traces the path of Chris Kyle from good-hearted Texas simpleton to serial killer but gets caught up in the action sequences, leaving us with only the sketchiest sense of how he played his "legend" into postwar fame and fortune, or even how he got martyred as an advocate for the therapeutic value of shooting guns for the mentally ill. Sienna Miller reminds us that wives can be forgiving as well as hysterical. Bradley Cooper plays Kyle partly as modest stoic and partly as action junkie, clearly preferring the hunt to his home life, not that he has the critical facilities to question any convention. That any Iraqis emerge with more dimensions than paper targets is due to the scriptwriter's fabrications, but even they turn out to be clichés, and even more absent is any hint of the thinking that made American soldiers arbiters of life and death in that miserable country. I could imagine someone making a mirror movie from the sniper Mustapha's viewpoint, with all that discipline and craft ending as his head explodes from Kyle's distant shot, but who in America would pay to see such a thing? We'd rather be fed the self-adulatory pablum this picture delivers. Still, it's sad that the only pride America can take from this war is the efficacy of its assassins. B- Selma (Nov. 11): Daniel Oyelowo does a fine job as Martin Luther King as the SCLC moved into Selma, Alabama to campaign for voting rights in 1965, and great care was taken in the casting of the many others who made up the movement, including the tensions between SCLC and SNCC. The white violence against the marchers was also palpable (although several incidents were merely mentioned). On the other hand, I was constantly irritated by how far portrayals of major political figures strayed from my own vivid memories from the day: especially Tom Wilkinson as Lyndon Johnson and Tim Roth as George Wallace. (I was more forgiving of Dylan Baker, who often plays psychotic killers, as J. Edgar Hoover, although the resemblance was equally remote.) One could have made a stronger point that the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, which came from demonstrations in Selma, coincides with recent Republican moves to gut the Act and once again to deny poorer Americans the right to vote. B+ I suppose it wouldn't hurt to include 2015 (to date): The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Feb. 26): Two or three storyline threads stretch our favorite Indian hotelier, Sonny Kapoor (played by Dev Patel) way past the breaking point, but this is saved by the same thing that saved its predecessor: it's a marvelous showcase for venerable British actors and actresses -- Bill Nighy and Ronald Pickup have the most to do sorting out their love lives, and Penelope Wilton makes a brief show for a trailer laugh. On the downside, it seems like they spent a lot of time at the end trying to kill Maggie Smith off, then couldn't do it. Ends inevitably with a big Bollywood dance. B Movies I didn't see but would have liked to:
For a baseline, I went through the 2013 film list. Just wrote down grades (and can't guarantee my memory is perfect there).
And 2012:
Time prevents me from going back further. One last statistical check is for how many A/A- records in each year: 2014: 4; 2013: 6; 2012: 5. Down last year, but not much more than random chance. Ask a question, or send a comment. Friday, March 27, 2015 American SniperI finally got around to seeing Clint Eastwood's American Sniper film yesterday. It took me so long mostly because my wife, who usually picks the films we see, wanted no part of it: I had to go alone, something I hadn't done since I caught the "last chance" showing of Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In in 2011. I didn't argue very hard. Everything I had read[1] suggested that the movie has many problems and few virtues. More importantly, I read Nicholas Schmidle's profile of the sniper in question, Chris Kyle (In the Crosshairs), so I had a pretty good idea what the story was going to be. The only question was whether director Clint Eastwood might add some nuance and conflict that Kyle doesn't seem to have ever grasped. But after Eastwood's senior moment at the GOP convention, and given his occasional infatuation with American jingoism, that wasn't guaranteed. It turns out that the movie is remarkably compressed (despite a 2:20 running time). It starts with what became the trailer, a scene with Kyle on a rooftop in Fallujah contemplating shooting a child and/or his mother as armored vehicles inch down a rubble-strewn street with US soldiers methodically going house-to-house, kicking doors in. He ultimately kills both, but before the shots are fired, the scene is interrupted for a little background. We see a pre-teen Kyle hunting with his father, and fighting with schoolkids. At the family dinner table, his father explains that there are three types of people in the world: sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs, who protect the sheep from the wolves -- Kyle's worldview in a nut shell. Grown up, Kyle rides bulls and broncs in a rodeo. Then, after a news report of a terror attack he signs up for the Navy Seals. We then get many scenes of sadistic basic training, a bar break where he picks up a wife, intense sniper training, 9/11, and his first tour in Iraq, where his first kills were that child and mother. The bulk of the film recounts his four tours in Iraq, each staged with an intense action sequence, separated by brief returns home as his family grows. Two of the action sequences involve talking to his wife on the phone, so she gets in on the war experience. As a sniper, Kyle lurks patiently on rooftops and in buildings, surveying the war calmly, methodically picking off "bad guys." But over time he seeks more action, so he joins in on clearing buildings, and is close by as two of his closest buddies get shot (one killed instantly, the other survived but was blinded and died in a later surgery). The action intensifies, with the final battle ultimately won by Mother Nature as a sandstorm engulfed Sadr City. That was the one where he made an "impossibly long shot" to kill his nemesis, a notorious Syrian sniper, only to have his building surrounded by swarming enemies with AK-47s -- the intense action interrupted by a call to the wife to tell her he's "ready to come home now." Of course, the crowds ate it up. The postwar scenes were anticlimactic: at first he showed signs of PTSD, but they fade away as he dedicates his life to helping other veterans. He takes one multiple-amputee to the shooting range, and when the disabled vet hits the target, he announces that he feels like he got his balls back. Salvation through shooting becomes Kyle's cause. In the last scene, he gets into a truck with another PTSD-damaged vet. Then the movie cuts to black, revealing that the vet murdered Kyle that day. The movie ends with footage of Kyle's funeral, and indeed it is touching. Just not clear for what. The film is based on Kyle's autobiography, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, written with two co-authors. The book came out in 2012 and was a bestseller before his death in 2013, and has sold many more copies (more than 1.2 million) since. The movie doesn't show anything about Kyle's post-Navy business or how the book and his self-promotion affected his life. The movie doesn't bring up Kyle's claim to have shot looters after Hurricane Katrina from atop the Superdome, or his story about "punching out Scruff Face" -- Jesse Ventura, who successfully sued Kyle's estate for libel (see Nicholas Schmidle: The Ventura Verdict). This would be a good time to quote Wikipedia's paragraph on "Historical accuracy":
"The Butcher" is an "Al-Qaeda enforcer" who is shown attacking a child -- the son of a "sheik" who gave info to Americans after Kyle's team broke into his house -- with a drill. He is killed in the firefight after the scene with the weapons stash. Mustafa is an enemy sniper -- an Olympic-winning marksman from Syria who appears at least three times in the movie, becoming a personal obsession for Kyle. Kyle kills him with his 2100-yard long shot, as part of the climactic battle scene. In other words, each and every significant encounter Kyle has with any Iraqi was invented for dramatic effect. (Presumably at least some of the anonymous, long-distance sniper kills come from the book. Kyle was credited with 160 kills. The movie shows maybe a dozen.) No doubt the fiction adds to the movie's drama. Perhaps it also whitewashes the US war effort, but Kyle was never more than a small cog in the military machine -- his rank after four tours was Chief Petty Officer, basically a sergeant -- and his approach to the war was so simplistic you hardly expect anything more: kill "bad guys"! Who are the "bad guys"? The ones who are trying to kill you. One of Donald Rumsfeld's most indelible one-liners was that "you go to war with the army you have, not necessarily the one you want." The actual army that Kyle belonged to is defined simply: they are trained to be extraordinarily lethal, when deployed they are very focused on their own self-defense, and their primary defense strategy is to be as aggressive as possible. No one in Kyle's army questions why they are in Iraq. No one doubts their right to be where they are or go where they want. And everyone is deeply affronted any time they meet any form of resistance. No one recognizes that other points of view are possible. For Kyle, in particular, everyone he kills is evil; if not, he wouldn't have killed them. The whole movie, from the sheepdog story on, is testament to Kyle's moral certainty, and the tearful funeral excess just serves to elevate his moral certainty to the nation as a whole. And that's why the movie elicits such a solemn reaction from a certain kind of American: the one who believes that America is the greatest nation in the world, so great that the rest of the world can (or should) prostrate itself at our feet. Nothing in the movie gives you a chance to question either the politics or the wisdom of Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq, let alone the wider trajectory of US involvement in the region. Even though most of the movie takes place in a foreign land, it never leaves an American mindset. For that reason it works as propaganda: even without explicit lies it reaffirms the war by not questioning it. What makes that worse is that the trajectory of understanding the Iraq war started to change with the Surge in 2007. The early period, 2003-04, was eventually viewed as an unmitigated disaster, but that boiled down to three things:
It's hard to remember that when Bush et al. conjured up this war, even though they led with the fear card, they tried to present the war like we'd be doing the Iraqis one big favor. That sentiment was one of the first casualties of the war. There's an old joke that goes: it's hard to remember that your mission was to drain the swamp when you're ass-deep in alligators. In the early days, Iraq was seen as an epic adventure in nation building. In the end, it's no more than alligator killing, which is probably why the SEALs are the last soldiers standing tall. Moreover, the worldview has changed. Early in the War on Terror, the "bad guys" were few: the religious fanatics of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Baathist elites of Iraq and Syria, a few others -- as much oppressors of their own people as enemies of the US. However, it turns out that the US was never "greeted as liberators" -- that everywhere the US bombed turned into enemy territory. That should have led us to question our entire approach, indeed who we are, but not being capable of introspection, we've changed out view of them instead. Looking at the US response to ISIS, even we can imagine no upside: just a long slog of killing a neverending supply of "bad guys," because once we enter a region, practically everyone turns into "bad guys." Of course, if you're not entranced by this latest, most vicious twist on "the American religion," it's possible to view American Sniper differently. It is a celebration of a cold blooded killer, but it also details his descent into PTSD, as he turns into someone his wife at one point says she no longer recognizes. Kyle at least saves himself by doubling down on the militaristic pietism that made him rich and famous, but he is surrounded by other vets who can't make that work -- including the one who killed him. It takes an extraordinary amount of empathy to watch this movie and conclude that the war has been disastrous for Iraqi families, even though there are scenes that show just that. But it should be easier to see how expensive the toll on American lives has been, whether you do or do not accord any special value to the lives of soldiers. Kyle should be viewed as a tragic figure in American history. He sure is no hero. [1] Some links from previous posts:
We can add a few more:
One more thought about the movie. One thing that is loosely implied is that Kyle got a perverse satisfaction out of sniping, at least for a while. Bradley Cooper plays Kyle as exceptionally modest -- lots of other characters dub him "The Legend" and offer other accolades, but Kyle mostly sloughs them off. Even though he's always teamed with a spotter, sniping is patient and methodical work, not something full of adrenaline rushes. But as he goes from tour to tour, he keeps getting drawn back for more and more -- although he never articulates it, there is something to sniping that he never experienced before and that once he experienced it would be missing from his life. It reminded me of a remarkable interview in the second season of The Fall, where serial killer Paul Prescott explains the intense sensation of living that he feels when he kills someone. Of course, Prescott killed far fewer people than Kyle, and did so furtively against the law whereas Kyle was on his government's payroll -- the difference was that Kyle never had to hide what he was doing -- but both were similar in the meticulous, artful way they set up and dispatched their victims. (You can find a summary of the episode here, although it skips the part I'm referring to.) |
The big, and for that matter good, news today is